Communications in the field is always a problem. GSM is the cellular technology that is used in most of the world. In the USA, Cingular and T-Mobile are the only providers with GSM networks. If you travel a lot, this list of GSM phone frequencies can come in handy: http://www.celluloco.com/products/customer/pages.php?pageid=18 (died due to link rot) or here: http://global.yesasia.com/help/topic.aspx?topicId=1164&lang=en or http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/gsm/gsm-list.html. If link rot kills them all, there's always google (updated 2006.04.17)
I have a T-Mobile Motorola v-330 which is quad-band, so it works pretty much anywhere except Japan. One reason I like T-mobile is that they will unlock your phone after 6-months of usage, which means you can pick up a local SIM card and use that during your travels rather than burning up roaming minutes. And I think T-Mobile has great customer service.
In Japan, the cheapest is to get a pre-paid cellular. However, they're getting much harder to find than in the past -- and you have to show some proof of ID. I'm not sure if they'll take foreign passports as proof.
The domain expired on 4-11-06.
I will look into T-Mobile
Thanks,
Bob
I have a t-mobile phone, and they have always done good by me, so i would recomenr them as well. most of my work is done in the USA and Canada though.
The only problem with T-Mobile is that the Canadian roaming rates are high - about $1/minute. It's even higher in Europe - about $2/minute.
Thanks Karen for the updated GSM URL's.
I am looking into T-Mobile, and compairing to Cingular which I currently have. I am not all that happy with Cingular.
Having a cell phone that works everywhere would be really good, I think having a tri or quad band phone that also supports 3G would get you past the Japanese problem.
This is a useful link: http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/index.shtml
It shows networks and their frequencies by country including 850MHz and 3G info missing from your other links.
Personally I have a tri-band Nokia 6310i that was originally on Orange UK. Unlocking most Nokia's yourself is pretty easy, just do a Google search on "Nokia Unlocking". I also use a dual SIM adapter to save swapping those pesky little cards over all the time and to save on roaming charges.
Lewis -
Thanks for the very useful information! I'm not familiar with any tri/quad-band + 3G phones but I'm sure they're out there. I used to have a Vodaphone Japan phone that I'm sure was 3G + some analog bands (since I used it in China), but Vodaphone refuses to unlike their phones for you (unlike T-mobile) and I haven't found any hacks to unlock it myself. All the various third party vendors I contacted also said it's unlockable, so it's sleeping in my closet.
Karen
I think the Nokia 6630 is 3G + quad band and the 6680 is 3G + tri band.
Try this link on unlocking Nokias:
http://www.unlockme.co.uk/dct4free.html
Now, it's interesting that analogue bands are getting a mention. From looking at that GSM world link I posted before it seems that China is all GSM 900Mz but I'm sure that's not the whole story, there are a whole host of other, incompatible cell phone technologies like TDMA & CDMA out there.
I did once see a "analogue adapter" for a GSM Nokia phone when I was in Canada that allowed the digital phone to work on analogue bands.